Homeschooling! And Some Misc. Nonsense

See what came in the mail yesterday!?  Princess and I are pretty jazzed about the upcoming school year at home.  She won't be five until the end of next month, but we decided to go ahead and start Kindergarten this year since she's chomping at the bit to learn "everything about everything" (her words).   I've been doing some casual stuff with Princess, just working through one book, the past few months so that now she is doing some simple independent reading.  Now we're going to jump in with both feet!   I'm sure I'll have more to say on homeschooling at a later time.  For now, suffice it to say that we are excited!

In other news, my lil Bug came down with a fever sometime during the night yesterday.  She then spent the entire day making a pathetic low pitch "m" sound to let me know that she felt crummy.  We spent so much time snuggling and rocking like in the above photo.  I hate when little ones are sick, but at the same time it is absolutely precious that they become so cuddly when they are.   I made dinner at 3 p.m. while Bug was snoozing so that I'd be free to snuggle more when she woke up.  It made for a pretty smooth evening which is awesome.

How is this allowed at 7 1/2 months?

Granted, Bug is not breaking any records here, but she's hitting certain milestones a bit sooner than her sisters, so I sit back and look at her in amazement.  I think she's anxious to run around like they do.   It looks so fun, all the running and giggling you know.

And here is a sweet pic I stole of my Smooch the other day napping in my bed.  For nap time, I've been separating the girls and it works out nicely that way, especially since Princess doesn't actually fall asleep anymore and just has a short rest time, and Bug's afternoon nap time varies a bit more than the big girls'.  So Bug gets her crib in the girls' room, Princess gets the playroom/guest room, and Smooch sleeps in Mommy's spot.  And with that, we are all out of bedrooms around here during nap time. ;-)   I am so thrilled that they all lay down at the same time for at least part of nap time each day.  I work very hard to build in a little mommy break to each of our days and it is so worth the effort.

We went to a community group at our new church this past Monday.  It made us miss our Albuquerque friends so much!  I think we're going to love this new group though, and there were a couple little girls close to Princess' and Smooch's ages.  They got along great!  A couple of the moms also homeschool, but they homeschool older boys.  I am really hoping to find a group of like-minded mommas with whom I can do some age-appropriate field trips this year, but finding any homeschooling moms around here is a great start.

Lastly, I think it's worthwhile to mention that I got a steam cleaner.  With all this moving we have been doing, and having to clean twice for each move since our new house is never up to my standards (and I am no clean freak), it made sense to get some of our own deep cleaning tools.  Think of all the money we could have saved if we had bought a carpet cleaner a few years ago!  Oh well.  Anyway, I love my little steam cleaner so far!  I think that it is having to take the dirt off these tile floors one or two layers at a time because they were previously so neglected.  I'm so happy that the floor no longer turns our feet black, and I no longer have to get down on my hands and knees in order to reach a satisfactory level of cleanliness.  Oh the life of a renter...

Happy Thursday!  We're off to a well child check for our eldest this afternoon, with appointments for the next two tomorrow.  Of her upcoming appointment, Princess said last night, "Yahoo!  Going to the doctor is my favorite thing ever in the whole world!"  She was being completely sincere.  Think we need to make some CA friends already? ;-)

Slow Down My Lil Buggie!

 Our Buggaboo at 7 months

Something happened yesterday.  I knew it was coming but I wasn't entirely prepared for it to happen so soon.  Yep, Bug pulled herself into a standing position.  She hasn't begun to officially crawl yet - although she did take three little crawling "steps," finally using those legs to go forward not backwards  just today - but she is very close.   I've been saying that for two weeks.  Hence the fact that I was blindsided by her sudden determination to stand up.  

Now we are doing that infamous dance.  The one where she pulls up in her crib but screams because she doesn't know how to get back down.  Yeah that one.  

I guess she is just determined to catch up to those cool big sisters, who by the way think she is becoming more delightfully fin everyday.

Too bad no one is happy in either of these snapshots.  Oh well. ;-)

 

We moved almost exactly one month ago now, and already Bug has sprouted two teeth, started dabbling in the consumption of solid foods, and manages to roam around the living room.  Slow down my lil Bug!  I'm almost out of breath trying to keep up with all the change. 

Happy Birthday to My Favorite Guy

Clayton's birthday was this past weekend, and we had loads of fun, and visitors!  His dad and step mom came for the weekend, followed by a visit from his sister and nieces.  We had so much fun hosting our first visitors in our California home.  We still don't know the local area very well yet, so we weren't sure what to include in our "tour," but I think everyone enjoyed seeing the date farm where we all enjoyed date shakes. 

 

Cousins at the date farm

 

A Princess and her Papa.

It was so nice to be around family. :-)  That was really the best birthday present for my husband.  I think it's safe to say that the only downer the whole weekend was this:

 

Yikes, right?  Wishing you many lower numbers on your own temperature gauges. 

Crafting With Strangers

When you move to a faraway land of strangers, I have learned from experience that the absolute best thing you can possibly do is jump in, feet first and with the gusto of someone who is planning to live in said location permanently.

So today I went to a ladies coffee/Bible study/craft morning at the church that we checked out last Sunday.  It is amazing how lovely it can be to sip, read and craft with a group of complete strangers.  Then again, I think this is something special that the family of God has going.

John 13:34 - 35

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

It was wonderful.  And my kids were in good hands too.  A sweet lady even rocked my little Bug to sleep for me.  All I've wanted to do since I got home is decorate flip flops and make cake pops, but I played with my kids (something I want to be better about doing), dabbled in the art of housecleaning, finished setting up Bug's crib (in the girls' room!), and read stories on the couch with Princess and Smooch until Smooch turned her head and closed her eyes.   It was both sweet and funny to have her fall asleep on me during story time.  I suppose it was past her usual nap time by about an hour.

In other news, Bug has been sleeping like a CHAMP at night all of a sudden.  She's been on and off with sleeping through since about 3 months old, but she's really been hanging on to 2 a.m. for the past month or so.  Not good.  Two nights ago, she started rolling over to sleep on her stomach and she's been sleeping until 6 or 7 a.m.  I feel like a new woman.   And it's only been two days.  If she keeps this up, I may conquer the world by the end of next week. 

Also, Bug got her first tooth immediately after we moved to California.  Then a second tooth about a week after that.  See in the above picture? My baby is growing up.  We even started her on solid food the other night. :-)

Behold, a video with terrible lighting, but a very cute baby nonetheless. 

'

Happy almost weekend.  My hubby's birthday is this weekend and we're having guests.  For this reason, I will get off the computer and go do something more productive.  And also I need to make dinner. :-)

 

Once Upon a Time I Was Smart, a Satire

I will admit it.  I was one of those annoying students for whom good grades in school came easily.  Or so it would seem.   I'm pretty sure my peers hated me for it.  I can still hear kids jeering as my 7th grade science teacher announced, "We had ONE perfect store on this test." I did not then, nor do I now not consider myself smarter than anyone.  I think everyone has an tremendous ability to learn, and some people just don't thrive under conventional learning methods.  I just happened to have the gift of a sharp short-term memory, which worked out splendidly in the traditional classroom.

My classmate's mom once told my mom that if I didn't go to college and do something great in the workforce (or something along those lines), I would be wasting my brain.  Thankfully I have parents that are just as enthusiastic about the many other ways a person can contribute to society as they are about a college-bound kid with sky high dreams, so the pressure was off.  

Still I went to college.  Then I went to more college.  No, that is not permission to ever correct my grammar. :-)

Then I had kids.   

It started with that first pregnancy.  My brain cells began dying off one by one.  Then sleep deprivation and the brain fog set in.   Three kids later, it's all I can do to remember to mail off a birthday card to a faraway sibling.  A week late.  I stammer, grasping for the correct English word in conversation.  I can't remember the last time I washed my hair.  Oh wait.  That's a separate issue.

Then today Princess and Smooch were fighting over a particular train car, specifically the yellow one that transports the wooden circus animals.  I was about to give my "taking turns" speech, when suddenly I remembered:  we have two of those train cars.  I just saw the red one a few days ago...hold on a second...*digging through toy box where I know I tossed it*...right HERE!  

And that's the thing.

Once upon a time, I was smart.  Then having babies killed many brain cells; however, I still maintain the uncanny ability to retain information like the whereabouts of any and all small girl items.  As a result, my kids actually think I know everything because I can find all of their stuff.  Therefore, I am not wasting my brain as this is both an important and practical skill that requires intense mental power.  Likewise, it takes incredible intellectual prowess to successfully coordinate the nap times of three small children in order to make time for doing important things like write this awesome blog post.   The End.

A San Diego Seventh

Since we arrived at our new California home on July 17th, it is amazing that either of us even remembered our anniversary with boxes and our belongings strewn about, fogging up our brains.  But we managed to remember far enough in advance to reserve a hotel in San Diego, for my stud to ask for Monday off of work which they amazingly granted him being that is was quite last-minute, and off we went for the weekend!  We met up with Clayton's cousin (who goes to school out there) for dinner, shopped IKEA the next morning for Mommy's wish list, and played on the beach all afternoon.

What!?  You mean we're not supposed to bring our children on anniversary trips?  That wasn't our first choice either, but circumstances being what they were, it was either put the kids to bed early and enjoy a romantic evening at home or make a weekend family trip.  We chose the latter, knowing that we could always put the kids to bed early and have a nice evening at home any time we want. :-)

We really enjoyed reminiscing about our first anniversary which we also spent in San Diego - how we fell in love with GPS for the first time, having dinner in Little Italy and witnessing the excitement when Italy won the championship, wearing ourselves out at the San Diego Zoo and Sea World so that our afternoon nap didn't end until 4 a.m. (Oops!), our funny cheap hotel, and the freedom of our short-lived pre-children era.
 

One thing we also talked about is that we are so GLAD that we have done so many things and visited so many places together.  We really have a lot of special memories in seven short years of marriage.   Even now that we have a little brood of children, we are so glad that we take the time and effort to make all the trips we do to visit family and take short weekend trips together close to home.  We really think it is effort, time, and money well spent since these are years that we will never get back.  I'm so glad that my love and I are on the same page with that.  We are having fun in this life we've created together. :-)

Another special thing about our mini vacation was lil Bug's first trip to the beach!  She let the sand fall through her fingers dozens of times before I determined that she was going to be our one baby who didn't try to eat sand.  No sooner did I say that then she started gagging and choking on a nice fistful of the gritty stuff.  So...never mind I guess. :-)

The weather was pretty much perfect.  It started off breezy and cloudy but then the sun finally burned off the clouds and shone through.  I think it topped out at 83 degrees that day, 25 degrees cooler than our house.  HA!  I was almost cold. :-)

 

Princess really enjoyed making a sand castle.  We didn't have any sand toys, so instead of buying some we just brought along some plastic cups and spoons.  The kids were thrilled with them.  My Stud and I took turns taking our two big girls to the ocean to play in the waves.  The favorite ocean game remains "wait for the surf to get close to your feet and then turn around and run away from it without getting wet."  We played that up until it was time to leave.  Smooch was less keen on the ocean than Princess but she was happy to play while safe in Mommy or Daddy's arms.

It is also worth mentioning, so that I never forget, that I ate possibly the best burger of my life for dinner at Hodad's before we headed home.  Too bad I didn't photograph that lovely event. 

Happy SEVENTH Anniversary to my favorite man in the whole world, my best friend and love.  Let's do this for 70 more years.  And next year, let's leave the kids at home. ;-)

Californians and All That

It's been so long since I've fallen off the blog bandwagon that I don't even know where to begin.  I guess I'll go with the most obvious update:  we moved to the grand state of California.  Just nine short months after we moved to Albuquerque.  Yes, just like a pregnancy.  Only not.  You don't want to get me started about all the things I do not love about yet another move, so I will try to focus on the things I do love about it. 

I love our new house.  And I mean way more than "like."

We are close enough to Disneyland to take a day trip.

Likewise, we are not too terribly far from the coast!  (for me, for the first time in over a decade)

We are much closer to our Phoenix family than before.

It is a little fun (satisfying?) to set up house and purge a bunch of stuff we don't need. 

With our new move, and with being decidedly less pregnant than I was for our last move (as in not), and with being officially out of the life with a newborn phase for awhile, I am determined to be good little blogger again.  I hope to chronicle our family's journey a little better than before, but if I'm honest I will probably just write about whatever I feel like, as always. :-)  Soo here's hoping I feel like jotting down some fun memories of life with the kids and such!  I really do love to blog for a lot of reasons.

I like to record memories that I can revisit.

I love having my own little corner of the internet.

I enjoy using the blog to keep family and friends near and far up to date on our lives.

I have a lot more to say than my Facebook status can handle.

And now...I don't have any friends. ;-)  Nearby ones anyway.

Seeing as how I've been such a non-blogger that my growing anonymous readership has disappeared, I'm pretty tempted to ditch the blog nicknames and move into reality.  But I lean toward the paranoid end of the spectrum when it comes to such things, so I think I'll keep the fake names and see if I can't finally come up with one for our youngest.

Off to update everything!

(Happy AUGUST!  Yikes.)

The Least I Can Do

Three kids may have rendered me a terrible blogger, but I'm not a quitter, so the least I can do is post a few photos once in awhile.  Time flies, in case no one told you.  Hazel is already 4 mos. old in these pics...and they're almost a month old!

 

Curve Ball Baby

My third baby is throwing me for a loop.  Daily.  As soon as I think I have her figured out, BAM, she switches it up.  I recently wrote about life with three children, and basically concluded that it was easier for me to transition from 2 to 3 children than from 1 to 2, but that having a tiny baby in the house (whether first or seventh) is still crazy hard at times.  I still think that's all true for me.  The balancing act is a little more fine-tuned these days, but it's basically the same balancing act that I developed when we added our second child so a lot of the work this time around was just in implementation rather than strategy.  However, I am here to say that Hazel is officially my hardest baby to date.  Yes, she even beats out Princess with her reflux and inconsolable daytime crying resulting from (what I had no idea at the time was) discomfort that likely caused.  And Smooch's late night, often very drawn out, "witching hour" (or three) has nothing on this kid.   It's very strange to say that Hazel is my hardest because she has (by far) the most settled stomach of all my kids, so that's a non-issue, and she outgrew her short evening witching hour very quickly (by about 7 weeks I'd say).  She sleeps pretty good for her age (4 hours plus 3 hours on average).  There are no major things that make her hard.  It's just this one little thing...

She's not particularly flexible.   And that adds up to a lot of little things.

Pacifier for soothing between feedings?  HA!  Not a chance.  Occasionally she chews on it so it momentarily distracts her.  However, it does not soothe her.  The girl wants skin.  Breast or some part of the human hand thankyouverymuch.   My saving grace is that she has recently been finding her own fist once in a while.

Bottle for pumped milk?  Nope!  No breaks for mommy.  And I'm not about to go out and buy ten different kinds of bottles to try.  We've been down that road with the pacifier already.

Car seat?  Hmm.  We recently learned that she does okay on long drives because once she's out she'll sleep until she's hungry.   However, around town, she's awake and screaming at every red light, often for the whole car ride since 15 minutes isn't long enough for her to settle into a nap.  As she has started to get a little bit older (She turned 2 months last week), she's beginning to have some quiet awake time in the car...if she's in the mood for it.  Typically though car rides = incessant screaming.

Naps?  In Mommy's arms.  Occasionally she'll sleep in the swing, and usually once a day I can get her to take a nap in the bassinet.  (Thankfully at night she will sleep the first chunk of her nighttime sleep in the bassinet, then it's snuggled up with mommy for part two.)  Baby wearing can only go so far during the day, and my back thanks me for a break.   We made great strides in this (no, I did not do "cry it out") so that she was beginning to nap pretty good without being held, but when she got RSV at about 5 weeks old, she wanted to be in my arms 24/7 and I was most comfortable with that as well so I could make sure she was, you know, breathing.  Now we're starting all over getting her used to napping once in awhile without me.  She's doing well, but she sometimes makes me wonder if she would actually like to crawl back into my womb rather than be out of my arms for 5 minutes.

Each week I'm dumb optimistic enough to try another solo outing.   Each week I come home feeling defeated, frazzled, depleted of energy, and frustrated.  Today I forgot to bring my Moby Wrap to the grocery store and I paid for it.  If I had toted Hazel around in the wrap, she probably would have been fine.  But no, I had to leave her in the car seat and clip it onto the shopping cart.  Amazingly, she had fallen asleep in the car and was so tired from fighting sleep while out and about all morning that she actually stayed asleep for a full 10 or 15 minutes at the store.   Miracle of miracles.

I must have looked like a joke racing around the store like my very life depended upon gathering all the apples and eggs I could in the shortest amount of time possible.  I was too focused to even notice whether or not other shoppers were giving me the strange looks I am quickly coming to know well.  Pity?  Disgust? Amusement?  Some of each a suppose.  If so, I was ignorant to it.  Princess and Smooch were mostly angels.  (I bribed them with snacks and the promise of a lollipop in the car.)

Then it happened.  Hazel woke up with all the wrath of an angry lion in her high-pitched "get me out of this car seat before I die" scream.  The one that causes random people to kindly suggest to me that my baby is perhaps hungry.

If I had a quarter for every time I have tried to explain to a perfect stranger that my baby has just recently eaten and is in fact just protesting the running of errands....

It's a wonder I take her anywhere by myself.

However, last night my husband and I dragged our entire entourage to Starbucks' and Hazel was happy the entire time, minus the drive.  My husband was there to help, and that makes a difference.  But the biggest difference is that, upon arrival, she was plopped into one of our laps and perched in one lap or another for our entire stay.  And therein lies the key to Hazel's happiness.

You see, she isn't an unhappy baby.  At home she grins and coos like a very sociable, contented, dreamy thing.  She really isn't a particularly fussy baby either.  (But don't touch her with cold hands.) And we don't hold her 100% of the time.  Just 90%.  ;-)  (Which is a vast improvement from 99%.)  She's even spending some time on her tummy on a play mat and other things.  Sometimes for a whole 10 minutes at once!  Yes, I'm making fun, but it is just unreal to me how much she demands to be held.  And how loudly she demands it.  And when we go out, particularly me by myself with the kids, we can't always hold her or wear her the whole time.

In retrospect, both Princess and Smooch showed very clear signs of their temperaments from birth.  Certainly, there were strong clues by two months of age.  So what I'm saying is that I may look back on this and think "Wow.  Hazel was kind of a demanding baby.  I'm glad she outgrew some of those things."  OR I will look back and wish I would have picked up on the hints that perhaps maybe the Lord saw fit to give us a touchy, demanding sort of child to raise.   Time will tell.

One thing is for sure, she is just as precious and brings us just as much joy as her sisters before her.  I can't wait to see who she becomes, as each facet of her personality blooms almost as quickly as she grows.  She may not be the most easygoing baby I've had, but I sure love her just as much as the more laid back ones. 

  (Pics taken Feb. 25th, from my trusty old phone. :-))

Life with THREE

The most common question I get from friends and family is this:

"So...how's it going with three?  Is going from two to three harder than one to two?"

Since I don't currently know very many people with more than two children, I have found that I am a little bit of an anomaly.  And people just loooove juicy details. 

Well juicy details will be yours! 

As with all facets of parenting, our experience with transitioning to three kids will be different than someone else's simply because each family has unique people and personalities contributing to the family dynamics.  Likewise, parents and children alike all have different levels of tolerance to things like noise and chaos and differing abilities to juggle many things at once.  So my perspective of what is hard or easy will be different than that of an outsider who might observe my family.  It might even be different than my husband's perspective.  Having said that, most days, I have thought, "Wow.  The transition from 2 to 3 is definitely easier than it was from 1 to 2." 

When I had only Princess, even though I watched other young children for the first two years of her life, she was used to getting a ton of one-on-one and two-on-one attention much of the time, particularly evenings and weekends.  That made the addition of a full-time sister, Smooch - even though I had stopped watching other children by then - a bit more uprooting for Princess than it was for Smooch to add a sibling.  Smooch has had her moments to be sure, but in being the second child she has never had Mommy and Daddy to herself, so her perspective automatically started out differently.  Plus, Smooch has an intense love of babies, whereas Princess was pretty aloof with babies at that age, so that has worked in our favor this time around as well.  Those are all things to take into consideration.

It has been challenging to juggle the wants and needs of three little people instead of two, keeping to a fairly predictable routine and coming up with new components of our routine where necessary.  But it's not as hard as I thought it was going to be.  It might just be because once you juggle two, three is not as complicated as you think.  One of the hardest things for me has been in not being able to attend to an unhappy infant quite as quickly as I would like to because I'm in the middle of another important parenting task, like putting lunch on the table for my two big girls.   And while Hazel (who needs a blog nickname) is not my hardest baby, she's not my most easy baby either.  Basically, I've had a really hard time getting her to nap (like stay asleep) while not being held.

We had been making some great progress in this area by using the swing up until she came down with a cold RSV a week or so ago.  Suffice it to say, that much of the time the Moby Wrap is my favorite piece of baby gear.  Also, until very recently, Hazel has refused to take a pacifier but instead has wanted to use Mommy as a pacifier which makes for erratic feedings and an exhausted momma.  We've also been able to work on that and she will *sometimes* now take a pacifier.  When the mood strikes her.  (But she'd much rather suck on a germy finger if given the choice.)

While I have solidified my preferences in recent years so that I do not intend to include "cry it out" in my sleep training methods in the way that I did for our first child, I find that I have to let Hazel cry on some occasions more than I would like to - not to get to sleep, but just as a matter of having to wait for Mommy to attend to someone else's needs for a couple of minutes.  This is where "tolerance for noise/chaos" comes into play.   I could see how someone who cannot handle the sound of crying might find the transition from two kids to three harder than form one to two in this way.  I do okay with some crying as long as I know that it is very temporary and in my control.

An advantage of having two "big kids" is that they really do keep each other company quite nicely these days.  Oh they fight more than they did before baby, but it's not too bad.  (Again, likely perspective coming into play here.)  I remember nursing Smooch constantly in those first weeks while poor Princess constantly begged me to play with her.  Though I came up with some special things for her to do independently during feedings, I still felt pretty lousy about putting my big girl off so much.

Also by the time we welcomed baby #3 into our home, Princess had been four for a few months and she is a tremendous help!  Things like running to grab something from the other room or the ability to grab an apple from the crisper if I need her to get her own snack are both fantastic.  Another thing the four-year-old adds is an unfazed "I've totally done this before and don't feel the least bit threatened by the new baby" attitude.  I believe her leadership in that has helped Smooch more than we can really measure. 

There are other moments during which I think having three kids is the hardest thing in the world and the days cannot pass quickly enough.   Those times include when illness turns my two-year-old into a bear/blubbering mess, Hazel screams during an entire drive because she does not love riding in her car seat much of the time, or for some unknown reason everyone is crying at the same time and it seems easier to throw in the towel and join in the crying myself.  However, those moments (minus the week of hell when Smooch was feeling very sick), are not constants in our days, so they don't rule our existence.  But when they do come, I question my sanity for having had three children, and I'm pretty sure I suck at life.  

Having three has finally driven me to certain level of structure and organization that Two Kids Amelia resisted like the plague.  For instance, I absolutely must roll out of bed and start my day before the children, including the infant.  I am very lucky to have children who seem to have inherited my love of sleep, because this means that I can usually sleep until 7 a.m. and still have at least 15 - 30 mins. to put myself together and pour a cup of decaf.  Sometimes I get crazy and take a shower.  Other times I decide I'd rather be dirty and just spend a little extra time to fix my hair and put on some makeup instead. Yes, I said makeup.  We all have own sanity requirements.  Don't dog on mine. ;-)  Back to my point, there is something about having your day started by a two-year-old that just makes you feel as if your whole day is ruled by said two-year-old.  Gotta stay a step ahead!

Likewise, I believe that I have become a little more skilled at managing sleep schedules with each additional child.  (Thank God I have gotten to add them one by one, right!?)  For example, I usually get to have a break from all children each day because I wait to put Smooch and Princess down for the afternoon nap/rest until I have Hazel asleep.  Since newborns sleep a lot, and my big girls are flexible on their nap time, I can arrange this beautifully on most days so that they are all down at the same time.  

Now keep in mind that as I right this we are still in the middle of winter and we aren't getting out much.  Granted, we have gone out to doctors' appointments and things like that, but I'm currently doing things like grocery shopping alone on Saturdays for example, so my perspective is pretty much from being at home all day.  However, I still think a lot of the same ideas will apply to our future out-of-the-house adventures.  Be sure that I will let you know when we get there.  :-)

I have heard that three kids is the breaking point for many people, while others think two is the most challenging.  So far, I tend to side with the latter.  My mom (of 12) says that it really just gets easier from here.  I think that partially depends on your particular children as well as how close they are in age.  However, I have come to one definitive conclusion: Adding an infant, no matter what number child, will always be more challenging than having just your "big kid(s)."  (I am still covered in breast milk each day, and I'm still tired just because I have a baby.  Babies by nature are very demanding people.  Never mind that she's my third.  Sometimes that's irrelevant.) I do wonder if it doesn't rock your world in a smaller way each time though. (like, "oh yeah I remember the smell of sour breast milk on my shirt" as opposed to "Ah!  Why do I smell like sour milk!? From my own body!?!?!")

Perhaps it's like I told my husband the other day, "I'm tired.  But I think as a mother, I have just gotten used to having my sleep interrupted.  I just don't feel as tired as I remember."  Apply that general idea to every aspect of life with kids, and there you have the short version of my answer.  :-)

Stages of Life: Reading, Peeing, Sleeping

 

I don't have time for blogging, though there are so many thoughts in my head I'd love to get down "on paper."  I'd love to share about the struggles and triumphs of having three little ones ages four and under.  I'm dying to tell Hazel's birth story (like before the details start to leak out of my brain).  There are so many thoughts about our family dynamics, things I love about our new home, areas in which God has been growing me/teaching me over the past couple of years that I'm ready to share, and lots and lots of ponderings.  But I scarcely have time to solidify many of these things in my own mind, let alone share and record them. 

As I told my husband the other day, in a couple of months, we'll look back and feel a little bit wistful about how quickly these foggy newborn days have flown by...and how funny it is that we thought we might not survive them. 

If you think of me, please pray for continued health for our family this Winter.  We've been dropping like flies around here, and our little one-month-old is the most recent member to fall prey to this horrendous cold that was shared with us.  So far, she seems to be doing well enough that I haven't seen a need to rush off to the doctor, but we are keeping a very close eye on her.  However, that little baby cough is still a troublesome sound indeed. :-( 

Some other updates:

Hazy has been sleeping for longer stretches at night (5 hours two nights in a row!), and even slept through the whole night (10 p.m. - 5 a.m.) one fluke of a day last week.   I think it was a gift from God because that night came right after a particular grueling night of multiple night wakings from a sick Smooch.  Even though my courageous husband kept getting up with her so I didn't have to, I still woke up each time and was on the verge of tears the whole next day, so tired I was.  Yes, I think the Lord was looking out for this momma's sanity.  I felt like a new woman the next day.

Isn't she a pretty baby?  I know.  I'm so biased. 

In other baby news, I still can quite figure her out.  Is she easy-going or not?  Something she seems like a calm, easy baby, but then she randomly does this high-pitched screaming thing regarding things like, "You're hands are cold" or "You are taking too long to whip out your breast."  She's not my easiest baby (Smooch), but she's not my most demanding either (Princess).  I love to try to observe little budding personalities and such, but in this case my baby seems a bit...bipolar?   Things like her disdain for car seats and pacifiers and sleeping somewhere besides mommy's arms leave me scratching my head.  But oh my goodness is she a sweet little smiler.  She cooed at the me for the first time two days ago. :-)  She's so snuggly (but hates being swaddled), and she also has the most settled stomach of all my babies so far (I can eat anything it seems!).  Good grief do I love babies.

Smooch is almost 2 weeks into full-fledged potty training.  I'm a big fan of the bare bottom approach. She's been wearing underwear with great success for a full week already, and I'm quite proud of our big girl.  She is so motivated by attention, praise and high-fives, that she is doing every bit of it by herself (pulling up and down underwear too!) without so much as a piece of chocolate tantalizing her.  I would like to attribute much of her success to the fact that I was the smart, well-researched weird hippie mom who began to sit her on a little pink potty chair at 9 mos. old.  I set her there.  She went.  It was too easy, but is what Elimination Communication is largely based on:  the idea that babies are wayyy smarter than we realize.  While I didn't do anything except say, "Okay, let's go potty now!" with the sign for potty (whereas true EC-ers do things that I can't do with a straight face like make pssst noises to encourage baby along.  Apparently.), and set her on her little potty, she obliged more often than not.  We'd set her on the potty chair right before bed or bath or just whenever it was convenient, not even everyday. 

Because of this laid-back training over the course of a year and a half, when we began full-fledged potty training the Monday before last, Smooch already knew how to go "on command" and we didn't have to spend any effort in helping her learn through trial and error how to control particular muscles/increase awareness of sensations.  Nor did we have many accidents to clean up.  So, I'd like to take credit for this very successful experience.  However, if I take full credit here, I'm pretty sure to be fair I have to take responsibility for the full YEAR it took us of hard core training before we could confidently say, "Princess is potty trained." (It took me another year to recover from the trauma.) ;-)  So...maybe Smooch is just one of those "easy to potty train" kids that you hear about from time to time.   Or a little of both?  Whatever the case, I'll take it!

For not having time to blog, I sure am rambling on and one, aren't I?

Princess is learning to read!  She had been showing signs that she was ready to learn.  Don't ask me how I know, b/c I can't pinpoint it exactly.  I've just been around a lot of "learning to read" aged kids and my homeschooling mother I guess.  So I ordered a book that has been on my wish list for months, and we delved into it this week.  By lesson 3, Princess was anxious to begin sounding out real words (which was still a few lessons away), so I let her try.  And by golly she could do it!  So now she's reading simple three-letter words (with soft vowel sounds) to her heart's content and she's excited to learn to read big words.  We're still working through our daily lessons (but today we did 2 because she was ready to move on).  

The book we're using, should you care to know, is phonics based and came highly recommended from a fellow mom friend (Thanks Cami!).  It's called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", but it is not at all gimmicky like the title sounds. :-)  Having earned my Master's degree in Elementary Education and spending a brief period in the kindergarten classroom, I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the methods in this book.

We had a sweet moment in that first instance when she read her first little word.  I shouted, "You DID it!  You're READING!"  And Princess just about jumped out of her skin as she threw her arms around my neck in unbridled joy.  It was such a precious moment, and I realized one of the many draws of homeschooling is shared moments of victory such as that.  Did I ever mention that we're considering homeschooling?  At least for the ever-important, very brief formative years.  I could write a post on that alone.

I am so proud of my budding little reader, my big girl in her dry underwear, and my sweet little infant sleeper.  And that pretty much sums up each of the girls' stage of life at the moment.

As for me,  maybe I have time to blog after all?

So...I Had a Baby

Hazel was born on her due date, January 5th.

 Being my earliest baby by a whole week, she was also my smallest at 6 lbs. 13.2 oz. and 20 inches.

There is so much to tell.  About my experience with a super cool water birth, about how sweet her sisters are with her, and about how "life with three kids" is so far.  But for now I'm enjoying those sleepy gaga newborn days (before they're gone!), so all I will say at the moment is that we are in love.

Moving Is Not for the Faint of Heart

We moved.  Over two weeks ago.   Moving day was one of the worst, most stressful days ever during which I shed more tears than I care to admit.  Due to certain cicumstances (read: lots of things going terribly wrong), I had to put on my big girl pants and drive the moving truck all by my lonesome.  Without directions (again, lots of things, terribly wrong).

And it ended like this: 

For the record, I was not getting gas.  For the record, I just needed a place to turn around (I was lost & had just figured out where I needed to go) and this not-yet-open-to-the-public gas station looked like my best bet.  I suck at turning moving trucks around.  Apparently.  For the record, several contractors were angry with me.  For the record, my husband is a contractor so I understood completely how I was "setting them back" and was in no need of guilt trips.  But bawling your eyes out in front of a superintendent apparently disarms him.  (I despise crying in front of people, a fact that made me cry all the harder.) And for the record, no, I still don't know if our insurance is covering it.

So this is one of the many reasons you haven't heard from me lately.  It's been a long, slow road.  And to be really honest, I haven't felt like "talking" about it on here.  Looking at that photo still makes my stomach do flip-flops.  Suffice it to say that it was a very, very bad day.  Someday, when it strikes me as more humorous, I might sit down and chronicle our moving misadventure...but today is not that day.

Unlike Princess, Smooch wasn't adjusting well to the move either.  Thankfully she has since moved past the tantrums, scratching, hitting, screaming, and whining and is back to her cheery self.  But for days, we looked something like this, perhaps minus my smile:

We're as unpacked as I dare to be considering we're likely moving again in the Spring.  (Lord, help us.)  All remaining boxes & their contents have been shoved into the garage for condensing, selling, donating, etc.  We have too much stuff.  How do I tell people I want coal in my stocking this year? 

(28 weeks)

Things have since settled down, and we've been able to enjoy a little bit of exploring in our new city.  I now know where to buy grass-fed beef, the location of our nearest Starbucks and the ever-important Hobby Lobby.  We also discovered a free pumpkin patch (of the non-farm variety) down the road a few miles from our house.     

We also have a little tree in our front yard with bright red Autumn leaves, in front of which we took my 30-week belly shot.   Because sometimes, especially when it feels like everything is falling apart, it's all about the joy you can glean from the smallest details in life, clinging to an attitude of gratefulness.  

Some of the many things I have been grateful for these past couple of weeks, are visits from family and unexpected phone calls from friends just wanting to check in on us.   Also, ill-fitting princess dresses and butterfly costumes, a husband who has shown an exceptional amount of compassion, unexpected toddler kisses, and the will to put my feet on the ground and start all over building our lives in a new place...again...when sometimes I'd rather conquer tasks at home and feel lonely because it's easier.
 

Wish me luck.  It's time to put on my big girl pants again: my first MOPS meeting is tomorrow, and I don't like social butterfly stuff. ;-)